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Personal Reflection Essay

Decent Essays

Personal Presentation & Style
In our Skype meeting Peter Owen impressed as having a large or outgoing personality and an expressive, self-confident somewhat blokey personal communication style. I thought it was probably highly appropriate to building engineering construction site operations.

In my view he has the personal authority and technical expertise to give direction to tradespeople. He appears to be savvy down to earth, and probably not easily hood winked by these personnel.

At the same time, Mr Owen claims he is effective with customers; he is not afraid to make calls, and states he has built his current employer's business significantly by his marketplace work. I think that it is likely that his extensive industry experience and down t earth style makes him and quite effective in prospecting for small to medium size engineering contract work.

Overall, I found Mr Owen engaging, and thought his style appropriate to the industry, and his claim for technical competence to be credible. This needs to be carefully reference checked - but at face value he presented as a very credible candidate.

Career Overview
By his own account, Mr Owen is around 56 years of age, and grew up in Newcastle where he did a Boilermakers trade and subsequent structural engineering and job-costing post trade studies.

His first work, in the early 1980s, was in engineering fabrication work building electric power transmission pylons for a business (EPT) which was later to be acquired by ABB. He did this type of work for a number of years in Queensland.

He later went to Western Australia where he worked on the North West Shelf.

By about 1990, he returned to Newcastle and work in BHP engineering is Manganese Plant construction. His specialisation was in plastic pipework (necessary for noncorrosive applications).

After working on the Manganese Plant, he worked with other E.P.T. people in a fabrication and maintenance business providing services to the BHP Smelter as well as to local mine works.

Next Mr Owen started a business with a business partner doing fabrication work for Jacques Quarry – later Downer.

Next he went to PNG – Port Moresby - for Hornibrooks joint-venture, doing structural steel, piping, bridges, ferries

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